The Real Woman Behind the Manet Painting

Curators delve into the identity of the model who posed for Spring

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A colorful painting of a woman with a parasol and beautiful dress, next to a black and white portrait of a woman in a beautiful dress and ornate hat

Jeanne (Spring), 1881, Édouard Manet. Oil on canvas, 29 1/8 x 20 ¼ in. Getty Museum, 2014.62 De Marsy (Amauls Legitimes) 2e Acte, about 1890, Emile Auguste Reutlinger. Albumen silver print. Getty Museum, 84.XD.879.167

By Scott Allan

Oct 07, 2019 Updated Apr 10, 2024

You may have seen Jeanne (Spring), Édouard Manet's 1881 painting, hanging in the Getty Center's galleries. But do you know De Marsy?

Manet is such a dominant figure in the story of modern art that the women he relied upon as models and who actively collaborated in his art-making have been overshadowed by his enormous reputation.

Spring, painted in 1881, was originally meant to be part of a series of four seasons, with each representing a chic Parisian woman (unfortunately, Manet died before completing the series)—a popular conceit in the Manet’s day.

But, asked the curators researching the painting for the 2019 exhibition Manet and Modern Beauty, who was she? What place did she have in his social circle?

Side view of a woman in a white flowered dress, tan gloves, and frilly hat, holding a tan and lace parasol, with a greenery-filled background.

Jeanne (Spring), 1881, Édouard Manet. Oil on canvas, 29 1/8 x 20 1/4 in. Getty Museum, 2014.62

The Mysterious “Jeanne”

Spring was purchased in 1882 by Manet’s close friend Antonin Proust and eventually found its way into an American private collection, where it remained for more than a century before the Getty Museum acquired it in 2014.

By the end of the 19th century, the painting now in the Getty collection had become widely known as Le Printemps, or Spring. But when the artist first exhibited it in the 1882 Salon—to much critical acclaim—he simply entitled it Jeanne.

So, who was this young woman? Jeanne was an utterly commonplace name at the time, and not a single Salon reviewer commented on the model’s identity, presenting the picture instead as a depiction of a fashionable social type: the chic and pretty parisienne.

Manet’s sitter was not identified until 1897, when Antonin Proust wrote that Manet “wanted to design a costume for Jeanne, who subsequently took on the stage name Mlle Demarsy and who modeled for the exquisite canvas Spring.”

Given the painting’s original title, Jeanne, and Proust’s identification of the sitter as “Mlle Demarsy,” art historians have repeatedly given the actress’s name as Jeanne Demarsy. But considerable evidence indicates that she went in the theatrical world by Jane, not Jeanne.

Biographical entries from the turn of the century, notations on some surviving celebrity photographs, the cover of her 1937 estate sale catalogue, and the inscription on her funerary monument all indicate “Jane.”

De Marsy (Amauls Legitimes) 2e Acte, about 1890, Emile Auguste Reutlinger. Albumen silver print. Getty Museum, 84.XD.879.167

Who Was Jane Demarsy?

Prior to her acting debut in 1887 this Jane Demarsy, born Anne Darlaud, was already a reputed beauty, an occasional artists’ model (depicted, for instance, by Renoir), and evidently a member of Manet’s social circle.

The catalogue for a 2016 exhibition on the theme of prostitution identified Manet’s young model as the “Jeanne de Marsy” featured in The Pretty Women of Paris, a salacious guide for Englishmen to Parisian prostitutes. There is just one wrinkle: the anonymous author indicates that “her real name is Jeanne Huart,” not Anne Darlaud.

What are we to make of this apparent contradiction? Should we conclude that “Jeanne de Marsy” and “Jane Demarsy” were different people? Or are we dealing with a complicated case of concealed or fabricated identities?

To address these questions we conducted genealogical research, hoping to determine whether there were any verifiable links between the names “Darlaud” and “Huart.” Intriguingly, there did seem to be one. As Anne Darlaud’s 1865 birth record and other documents from Parisian archives attest, her parents were named Jean-Baptiste Darlaud and Adèle Huard.

Could it be that Anne—only 16 years old when she sat for Jeanne—used her mother’s maiden name as cover and went for a time as “Jeanne” before reinventing herself as “Jane” when she took to the stage? Perhaps to distinguish herself from her older actress sister Eugénie-Marie, who went, intriguingly, by the stage name Jeanne Darlaud? There is a fascinating and tangled story here that we are only just beginning to unravel.

Whatever stature Jane Demarsy earned as an actress, she never shook her reputation as a so-called demimondaine, or “woman of easy virtue”—a reputation that attached almost automatically to actresses in Manet’s day. In January 1938, soon after Demarsy’s death, the journal La Vie Parisienne published an appreciative notice about this “sensational beauty of the turn of the century,” noting that her passing will be mourned by “many old gentlemen sadly reminiscing about their youthful conquests.”

Want to learn more about Manet and his models? Check out the 2019 Getty Publication Manet and Modern Beauty

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